FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

This blog celebrates the art of waking up with your enemy's blood on your face by pitching fictional characters against each other to decide once and for all who is supreme. There are fifty FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!s present for your consumption and education. Go nuts.

Monday, 23 September 2013

It's the end.The moment hasn't really been prepared for.I'm pretty much typing this as you read it.

FIGHT #50

JAMES BOND

vs

JAMES BOND

vs

JAMES BOND

vs

JAMES BOND

vs

JAMES BOND

vs

JAMES BOND

WHO THEY THEN?

James
Bond is a 00 ranked secret agent for MI6. He is ageless and
deathless, a mutable killing machine. For some reason, he looks and
acts differently some of the time, like he totally started off as
this charmingly violent Scottish guy.

Then
he went a bit Australian and understandably settled down with Diana
Rigg, but that went a bit deady, and then he went Scotch again (like
an egg that's had all the breadcrumbs and sausage meat taken off,
then re-applied).

Then
he had smarmy eyebrows, because mass
murder on behalf of a bygone relic of an empire really chimes tonally
with smirking sexual innuendos.

OH
AND THEN he's all like smooth veneer hiding an impatient, ruthless
blunt object.

CHRIST
ON A SHIT! Then there's a Bullingdon rugger slugger who'll leave your
wife smelling of whiskey and fear but you won't know because he'll
have punched you repeatedly in the face and hid your body in a
portaloo.

THEY PACKING MUCH HEAT?

Why yes. It's somewhat de rigeur
for an agent licenced to kill. Famously packing a Walther PPK, though
initially bearing a Beretta 418 and occasionally favouring the
Walther P99 Semi-Automatic (details doubtless noted by everyone ever
shot by any of these guns), Bond is an exceptionally gifted murderer.
He'll deploy his weapons, gadgets, vehicles and even household
furniture to this end. He enjoys it after a while, because if it's
your job to kill loads of people I suppose you've got to find
happiness where you can.

In many ways, it's dashed useful
that he's employed by the state to do all these killings, to keep us
all fictionally safe at night. You can't help but get a patriotic
erection when watching a James Bond film, even if you're a lady. He's
just that manly, provided you don't stop and think about what he's
doing for any time whatsoever.

The prose version of Bond seems
more dispassionate about killing. He's a hard-drinking, hard-smoking
homophobic sociopath. Fleming didn't have to worry so much about
making him palatable for a huge audience, so could happily reveal and revel in flaws to a greater extent than the film versions.

THEIR BACK: WHO HAS IT?

Many other agents assist James
Bond. M, Moneypenny, Q, a variety of expendable 00-agents. He also
tends to meet a woman who will end up saving his life at some point,
but who he will never see afterwards even if she does survive.

He also has FBI agent Felix
Leighter, who miraculously recovered from being eaten by a shark by
coming back with a beard and a different accent. If only everyone in
Jaws knew that such a trick
existed.

NUANCES AND WHATNOT

Bond has this habit of traversing
time and space at a strange rate, changing his face and personality
while remaining roughly the same person with roughly the same modus
operandi. Occasionally his colleagues do the same thing, but
occasionally they remain the same while Bond changes.

The most logical explanation for
this multi-faceted stretching of time is that Bond is either an alien
with such powers with a strange and violent attachment to the British
was of life. Alternatively, 'James Bond' could be a code name for a
group of very similar spy-men who have all worked for MI6 over the
years.

Interestingly, many of them would
share similar memories and backgrounds, suggesting that perhaps some
sort of Jason Bourne-like programming is done to these men. Perhaps
the role of James Bond is tinged with tragedy, as men leave
everything behind to believe themselves to be a destructive, orphaned
killing machine. They will eventually burn out, their fate
undocumented, until a replacement can be found...

IT'S CLOBBERING TIME

Six coffins. The flag of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland is draped crisply over each one of them.
Uniform. Enveloping. Secure.

They sit ready and waiting in a
green and pleasant field, graves freshly dug, but no other human in
sight.

What happened, you may ask, that
caused such a thing to pass?

***

The silo went underground further
than it rose into the sky. Beneath Derbyshire, relics of security
bided their time until death. The entities that entreated them to
destroy and protect could not bring themselves to do the same. It
would be like putting down an old, faithful dog.

Within the caverns, there was a
complex of tunnels, cells and dungeons. Dripfed, forlorn, and
destitute, it was the last resting place of those who held a name of
portent. They now sat slumped, waiting for nothing, that last
alluring deprivation that they had meted out to so many.

Area 007 was a melancholy place.
Once vigorous men dwelt there now, and their memories were patchy.
Internal monologues aren't what they were:

Was it you – the charming,
bereft one – or you – the twinkle-eyed playboy – whose wife
never made it? You both think it was you? Oh, no matter. I had so
many women. I can't remember their names. I can't remember their
faces. I can't remember the sensations. So did I really experience
any of it?

Today, though, is a day of
relative excitement.

There is to be a new inmate.

He comes in, wheeled on an
upright trolley, strapped down like a live-action version of
Operation. He head lolls, his blonde hair is faded. His eyes are not
looking. His little blue pants are stained.

'What happened?' asks an old
Bond, his eyebrow creaking upwards.'Never you mind, grandad,' says
one of the orderlies, 'Just eat your gruel and die peacefully.''Do you enjoy living in this
country, young man?''No. Shut the fuck up.'

Cowed, the Bond's smirk
collapses. Not enough stamina. No gun to back up his point, no
inventions from Q branch to extricate him from an indiscreet lack of
dignity. The Q he knew was gone. So was the Q after him, apparently
(though nobody had liked that one, he'd only done it for the money).
That was two now, after him. They didn't last like they used to.

'Honestly,' said the orderly, 'I
don't know why we bother. If it was up to me, we'd just slit your
throats and get it over wi-'

The orderly stops speaking,
probably due to the serrated blade that is making its way through his
throat. It is in no hurry, mainly due to it lacking sentience, but
also because its operator is in no hurry either. He does not seem
unduly fussed about the large amount of blood he is getting on his
jumpsuit, possibly because he takes it off to reveal a smart tuxedo
beneath. He adjusts his bow tie. Time has been kind to him.

'You!' says the Irish one no-one
really dislikes but no-one really likes either, 'I thought you were
dead!''I thought he was on the run,'
says the Scottish one.'I thought he was on the run, and
then they killed him, and so he was dead, which is kind of what you
said,' says the Australian one.'Gentlemen,' says the newcomer,
'Allow me to introduce myself. My name is O'Brien-ffrench. Conrad
O'Brien-ffrench. But I used to be known as...Bond.''Why are you here?' says the
English sexual deviant Bond.'Isn't it obvious?''No, you'll have to explain it as
if someone was listening to this conversation and didn't understand
any of it whatsoever.''Of course. I was lying low in a
BBC Wales drama production in 2009 when I discovered the location of
Area 007. I'd heard rumours for years that all the old James Bonds
were shunted down here to die in peace, so that the country couldn't
be seen to have blood on its hands as usual. Then I bided my time
until another Bond was ready to be incarcerated. Fortunately this one
was more volatile than most, and our former masters really put him
through the ringer, drained him dry. Then, I used the training they
had given me against them.''Are you here to free us? Is that
it?' asks the Scottish one.'Oh, considerably more than
that.'

Before anyone can react, the
newcomer brings out a gun and fires it at the heart of the Scottish
one. He looks down at his chest, reaches out, and then collapses to
the floor with a gasp. Then the newcomer fires at each one of his
iterations, before finally turning the gun on himself.

***

Gathering in the field, members
of MI6 and the new 007 await the monarch with trepidation. It feels
only right that the person in whose name these men were acting should
attend their burial, even if she knew nothing of their previous
internment.

The new Bond walks, arm in arm
with the monarch.

'I thought you'd look more like
Clive Owen or Dougray Scott,' they say to the new Bond.'Yeah, I get that a lot,' he
says. The Prime Minister just said the same thing ten minutes ago.

The brass band strike up. The
hymn is Jerusalem. A mist
begins rolling in.

'M?'
says Bond.'Mmm?''No,
M,' says Bond. 'The forecast wasn't for mist was it?''Possibly,
later in the day.''Was
it for mist that started above some dry graves and coffins?'

M
stares at the mist. It hasn't rolled in from down the valley, it's
starting here.

'Get
them out,' he says, 'Get everybody out.'

But
it is too late. The guests are already coughing and hacking,
attempting to cover their faces with kerchiefs. The monarch is bent
double, a thin stream of orange flem escaping the side of their
mouth. Bond, panicking, tries to dab it back into their mouth with
his gun. When he turns to M for help, he discovers his boss' eyeballs
are peeling like suicidal onions, a high pitched burbling noise
building as the fluid within tries to escape.

'M!'
Bond cries.'Mmmmmmm!''No,
M!' says Bond. At least he tries to. His tongue falls free of his
mouth and hangs for a second on a tendril of gummy flesh. It hovers
like a skilful yo-yo, before pinging back into his mouth with a snap,
lodging at the back of his throat. Bond chokes and gags. That was
utterly disgusting.

Meanwhile,
everyone's sort of melting. For his first big operation as a
00-agent, it's been a bit of a pisser. The monarch is trying to hug
their own innards back into their stomach, as they appear to have
made a sludgy lunge for freedom. M now looks like someone's done a
shit in some jam, and Bond's fairly sure his penis has just sieved
itself liquid through his flies.

The
last thing that passes through his brain before he loses
consciousness is a strange purple liquid that was previously the left
anus of the monarch. It is pleasantly warm.

Some
hours later, the six Bonds push open their coffin lids, and survey
the carnage.

'Well,'
says edgy Eighties Bond, 'I think that went okay.''What
on earth is that?' says racy Seventies Bond, pointing at the stream
of multicoloured viscous liquid that is now flowing into the open
graves.'That,
I should imagine, is the remains of MI6 and the heads of state. My
plan worked.''Ow,
my head,' saysh the Scottish Bond, 'What the schit jusht happened?''Well,
I shot you all with a knockout serum that, once metabolised, would be
emitted through the human body to produce a noxious and fatal gas.
Something Q knocked up years ago to deter homosexuals from using
public parks.'

There
is a pause while this information is digested.

'Are
you saying,' says Australian Bond, 'That we just farted poison over
everybody?''Poison
that does that?' adds the Irish one.'Yup,'
says edgy Eighties Bond. 'There's now a power vacuum, and I think it
only right that we should march right on into it.'

Blonde
Bond speaks. He has not spoken yet, and his blue eyes betray a deep
sadness within.

'I
think we should all have sex,' he says.

There
is a pause while this information is digested.

Blonde
Bond turns to his predecessors and uses his blue eyes and pants to
eye-watering effect.

'We
are the only people who understand what it is like to be Bond,' he
says. 'We've been through it, no-one else. We all have the same
unfulfilled sexual desires, and the same outrageous confidence. I
think it's quite possible that we've been afraid of this for quite
some time.'

All
the Bonds ponder these words for a moment and then, gradually, they
all smile. Little blue pants are shanked down hefty thighs, and the
Blonde Bond spreads his arms wide in welcome.

And
so, as the liquefied remains of Britain's hierarchy are joined by a
variety of other fluids, James Bond finally meets his optimal sexual
partner on a backdrop of Union flags in a very green and pleasant
land.

Monday, 16 September 2013

The very worst thing an inexperienced fighter can do is beat everyone in the entire world.Where else is the next fight going to come from?

FIGHT #49

THE CHILDCATCHER

vsBOBA FETT

WHO THEY THEN?

The
Child Catcher is the employee of Baron Bomburst. His purpose is to
snatch children from the streets of Vulgaria. The Baron and Baroness
really do not like children, though they have chosen to be pro-active
about it rather than just put up with the little shits like the rest
of us do. He features in the film and stage version of Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang.

Boba
Fett is a bounty hunter who delivers the frozen body of Han Solo to
Jabba the Hutt in the original Star
Wars trilogy.
He is definitely a bad-ass, as long as you don't really pay attention
during any film that isn't The
Empire Strikes Back.

THEY PACKING MUCH HEAT?

The
Child Catcher is a cunning beast, but resolutely non-lethal. His
apparatus is designed to instil fear, oppression, and pain into his
captives. He is capable of a jovial (if creepy) facade in order to
lure victims away from their homes and into his sinister kidnapping
caravan.

It
sounds worse than it is.

Boba
Fett wears scavenged armour and carries a conspicuous blaster pistol
with him. While he is capable of defending himself, he normally only
kills after receiving a huge fee.

Thus,
Boba Fett wins, if only because it's more likely that someone will
pay him to kill the Child Catcher than it is for the Child Catcher to
kill Boba Fett by asking him if he wants some lollipops.

THEIR BACK: WHO HAS IT?

The
Child Catcher is backed by the tyranny of Baron and Baroness
Bomburst, and the armed forces of the barony of Vulgaria. An
oppressive regime that rules by fear, and reduces Benny Hill's
lecherous avarice to the disposition of a kindly toymaker, it baulks
at adhering to Germanic stereotypes by being quite slapdash and
clumsy.

They
have a network of spies, but no inventors. Thus, their espionage
agents have no handy gadgets with which to extricate themselves from
tricky situations.

Boba
is a lone wolf, more akin to the classic violent yet righteous loner
beloved of the Western genre. He has done business with Jabba the Hut
and faced down Darth Vader. The latter isn't that impressive when you
consider that a young Boba saw the whiny, wooden arsehole version of
Darth Vader.

NUANCES AND WHATNOT

On
stage, Wikipedia lists the Child Catcher as being played by Richard
O'Brien and Wayne Sleep. It does not state if they did this at the
same time, though we can but hope.

Boba
Fett first appeared the Star
Wars Holiday Special,
the first of many teats to be milked by the club-brained
Nietzsche-Ewok that is George Lucas.

IT'S CLOBBERING TIME

Someone
has paid Boba Fett – the ancient bounty hunter - an awful lot of
money to despatch his latest target: a strangely Semitic (ah, the
past, you were slightly more racist than the present) faux-Dickensian
ravager of the lies your parents tell you to make you feel safe. It
wasn't that he objected to a man being a tool of state oppression,
but imprisoning children on that scale is not only wrong, it's
impractical.

He
is hiding in the mountain ranges of this world, still kidnapping
children through nothing more than force of habit. He dresses in
strange, colourful, oversized garments and plays alluring music with
his alpenhorn. So go the rumours. Thus, Boba Fett follows the
mellifluous bellow and the trail of distraught parents along the
villages of the hillside, hoping to track down his quarry.

Resting
in an inn, he insists on paying for his lodgings after they are
offered to him for nothing. The peoples of the mountainside have
heard of his quest, and are grateful to the man who seeks to return
their children to them.

'I
have no wish to return your children,' says Fett, 'I merely seek to
kill the man I am being paid to kill.'

He
insists on paying his way. He turns down the men and women who offer
themselves in both gratitude and sheer lust. This is not why he is
here on this planet, in this universe.

On
the fifth day of his journeying, after four villages, a dwindling
scent, and one dead bear, Boba Fett hears the drone of the horn
nearby, and freezes against the rock surface. He carefully aims his
laser at the edge of the rockface, readies himself, and waits.

A
tall, gangly human shape shudders into sight, a clipped trilogy of
laughter escaping from it like an erratic deckchair. Fett fires, and
the figure gasps. He's caught it across the throat, opening and
cauterising so all it can do is gasp uselessly as it tumbles down.
The knees gone, it folds over, and then pitches forward over the
ledge.

The
oversized red cape make it look like a bird that has decided to end
it all. Fett adjusts his laser and takes aim. The body stops falling,
and the laser juts forward. Fett takes the strain, and reels in the
catch. The inhabitants of this planet would regard it as fishing, he
supposes, though there's a bit more to it when you've got a hand-held
tractor beam instead of a rod and twine.

The
body retrieved, he sends a signal to his employer, and sits back to
wait for the shuttlecraft.

After
chewing on salted bear-meat, Boba Fett hears a new sound.

Somewhere
close by, a child is crying.

He
has seen the grief from their absence. He has seen their kin suggest
their flesh in barter. There is a gap in their lives that can only be
filled when their children are returned to them.

Boba
Fett has some time before the shuttle is due to collect. By the time
the children return to their villages, he will be gone.

As
the sun falls below the foothills, and the sky is swathed in all the
shades of blue nature can provide, Boba Fett finds a cavity in the
rockface that echoes with the sound of children's cries. He follows
it through to a torch-lit chamber. There are wooden cages, and
children in rags working at some kind of mechanism. Their heads turn
as they become aware of the newcomer.

'Who
are you?' they ask.

'That's
not important,' Boba Fett says, 'Go now. You are free.'

'Where
is the Childcatcher?' they ask.

'He
is dead.'

The
cries he heard earlier return. A small girl, muddy blonde hair
exploding outwards from her head, is weeping.

Monday, 9 September 2013

Are
you happy that your hard-earned and even harder-claimed tax dollars
are going to be spent on 'real po-lice'?

Well,
friends, I think we can do better and I think you deserve better.

We
all know that 'unreal po-lice' are required in these desperate times.

How
about techno-techno po-lice?

Now
we're talking!

Now
we're really fighting crime!

Now
we're getting hard on some hard science fiction, son!

You
can keep your real po-lice for we have the next generation of law
enforcers to serve the public, maintain order, stick up for the
greater good and soak up the entire municipal budget.

Well,
we could either play with crime statistics figures or play with
science. Ask yourselves, what would real po-lice do?

We've
got the technology. We've got the dream. It is a dream deeply rooted
in the American Dream.

Oh.

You
didn't want your hard-earned and hard-lost tax dollars spent on
ludicrous, unnecessarily-expensive law enforcement solutions built on
futuristic technology brainstormed by imbecile minds under the heavy
influence of ultraviolent pop culture?

Well,
fear not citizens! We'll have none of that nonsense on the streets of
this fair burg! For we are real po-lice!

*Secretly
initiates back-up plan where over-expensive techno-techno po-lice
destroy each other before anyone sees the research and development
budget...*

FIGHT #48

ROBOCOP

vs

TIMECOP

WHO THEY THEN?

RoboCop
is a nice title for a late 20th century sci-fi action flick. The
character himself is a cyborg law enforcer working in Detroit,
Michigan. Once upon a time he was Officer Alex J. Murphy, a
full-blooded family man with feelings and emotions, but that all
ended when a gang of sick sadistic goons tortured our innocent hero
and shot his body to itty-bitty-git-bits.

He
was left for dead but (un)fortunately(!) Omni Consumer Products - the
corporation proud to privatise and ruin all your public services -
picked up his bloody mutilated husk and reappropriated it for their
own insidious ends. He's now RoboCop (model name: OCP Crime
Prevention Unit 001) and he has four prime directives...

1.
Serve the public trust.

2.
Protect the innocent.

3.
Uphold the law.

4.
(Classified).

Altogether,
he's a pretty cutting edge piece of technology and he impresses
himself as an appealing, awe-inspiring lawmandroid so cool that you
can keep his stocky metal form staggering through numerous sequels,
comic book spin-offs, TV shows and video games. Say "RoboCop!"
and 87% of the crooks in the neighbourhood will crap themselves in
fear.

Oddly,
absolutely no-one has made a film called Hobocop,
but it's only a matter of time.

With
the decline of the automobile industry, Motown going out of fashion
and The White Stripes splitting up, RoboCop now stands as Motor
City's most successful international export.

Timecop
is a nice title for a late 20th century action flick. The character
himself is a TEC (Time Enforcement Commission) agent named Max Walker
and his job requires him to repeatedly whizz back into the past to
apprehend and beat up bad guys who want to reverse engineer history
for their own selfish gain. He does this by jumping in a
shuttle-shaped time machine that gets shot at a wall in a basement
beneath a secret government building in Washington D.C.

In
essence, Max is a civil servant in the employ of Uncle Sam but he's
got shades of mindblowing science, a certain charismatic aura and a
sympathy-guaranteeing personal trauma backstory to make him both
interesting and likable.

After
his pregnant wife was brutally murdered he responded by growing a
mullet and devoting all his energies into his crimefighting career
across the space/time continuum. His brooding toughness and
timelessness has also been stretched across comics, a videogame and a
couple of live-action spin-offs (though to them we say "Damn you
if you don't have Van Damme!").

Say
"Timecop, man!" and 96% of the chrono-crooks on this cosmic
string will start having a panic attack.

THEY PACKING MUCH HEAT?

RoboCop
rocks a 9mm Auto-9 handgun and he's got this neat trick where he
whizzes it around like a gunslinger from an old Western movie (He
stole it off the TV show T.J.
Lazer to impress his kid
but, damn it, he made that move his own and no one remembers T.J.
Lazer). He's familiar
with other types of firearms and is renowned down at the police
firing range as the best shot on the force.

He
can't possibly miss because he's been built for perfect, 100%
accurate shooting and Murphy's new programming has other combat
advantages. His bulky armoured body is highly damage resistant so
RoboCop can resist heavy blows, bomb blasts, extreme heat and insults
from trolls on internet message boards.

In
addition to thick skin (or rather, thick titanium-laced-with-Kevlar
exoskeleton), OCP Crime Prevention Unit 001 has superhuman strength
and, as a cyborg, a whole shock of artificial enhancements to make
him even more effective as a soldier. And in spite of the fact that
he's more machine than man now, he's got a sense of humour and some
wicked put-downs to put down on the creeps he puts down.

Our
friendly neighbourhood Timecop is packing futuristic firearms from
the future (2004). Those are back-up weapons though because Walker
excels in close combat in which he gets to utilise his whole stack of
wham-bam-thank-you-Van-Damme martial arts moves. The kickboxing
chrononaut will leave your reeling after striking you with swift feet
and fists and then he'll execute a perfect split in mid-air and hold
it for 10 hours.

Max
Walker dances with all the beautifully brutal grace and lethal
agility of Jean-Claude Van Damme to kick on in this contest.

THEIR BACK: WHO HAS IT?

In
Murphy's corner is partner Officer Anne Lewis. She's an old-school
tough cop whose relationship with RoboCop is one of compassionate
empathy. Though he can rely on Anne, the rest of Detroit's police
force leaves much to be desired and they're usually on strike so,
yeah, so much for back up. Likewise, RoboCop can't trust the
scientists and suits in the employ of OCP because they're all greedy
rapacious capitalists who only want to exploit our hero for their own
evil agendas.

When
you remember that Murphy's family abandoned him when he died and was
resurrected as a robot you realise that RoboCop is a lonely,
vulnerable figure indeed. Still, the public loves him so much that
they funded a Kickstarter campaign to get a bronze statue of him
erected in Detroit. And each and every single one of 'em hollered
"I'd buy that for a dollar!" as they clicked the 'Back this
project' icon.

We
get a feeling that the folks in the TEC are pretty indifferent to
Max. His superior, Commander Eugene Mutazak, claims to be his best
mate but friendship is a pretty fluid and irrelevant concept when you
work for the U.S. Government.

Max's
past partners have all turned out to be stooges taking pay from
corrupt third parties and every time the Timecop returns to the
present he finds that the dynamics of the office - even his
colleagues' entire personalities and personal histories in some cases
- have been altered. In total, Max can only really rely on himself
and his past self though if they should touch each other both would
physically merge into a gloopy mass and then melt away out of
existence. Such are the hazards of time travel.

RoboCop
comes top in this round because he has a reliable partner and more
fan power propping him up.

NUANCES AND WHATNOT

Max
Walker uses technology. Alex Murphy is technology. That's nuance.

Still,
both figures are similar in that they are decent, good, hard-working
men. It just so happens that the institutions they work for may not
have their or the public's best interests at heart. This makes these
paragons of justice slightly tragic in a way. Wouldn't it be cool if
they turned in their badges, went vigilante or formed their own
private detective agency? Maybe once they've had this fight they can
join forces and lead a buddy cop movie or something...

They
also have something else in common: a sad family situation. Both are
lonely men who miss the wives and children that were cruelly taken
from them in a moment of pointless, shocking violence.

Both
men stand on top of subtexts about the corruption inherent in the
capitalist system and the abuse of technology and institutions by
those with wealth and power but you can overlook all that if you just
want to get high on rollicking robo-boogie and Western martial arts.
There's a reason subtext is subtext.

On
to more personal details - RoboCop survives off a diet of baby food
that is spoonfed to him by an underpaid underling in a white lab
coat. We don't know what Max Walker likes to eat but we can guarantee
that he doesn't need someone to force it down his throat. He's a
grown man, not a grown mandroid infant.

Speaking
of nourishment, we do know that Max likes to chew on Black Black
chewing gum which is a Japanese brand. This is product placement and
it's written into his lucrative contract.

RoboCop also fronts a
number of TV adverts in the Asian market and has promoted Korean
fried chicken and Japanese instant noodles, among other consumer
goods.

If
this were a battle of commercial interests, RoboCop would win without
any contest thanks to the number of times he's been replicated in
action figure or commemorative model form. No one has a statue of Max
Walker on their mantelpiece, a Timecop Pez dispenser or a coffee mug
shaped like Jean-Claude Van Damme's head in their kitchen cupboard.

Both
men are also doomed to be victims subjected to full reboot treatment.
As we anticipate a future where they each come to battle their own
upstart doppelganger, for now we'll let 'em clobber each other...

IT'S CLOBBERING TIME

We
decided to abandon the sophisticated computer system that used to
decide the outcome of fights. In a world where everything is
controlled by algorithms, where everything is synced to social media
and where everything is wired 24/7 we decided the truly radical thing
would be to kill the computer. We killed the computer. We killed it
with fire and now we feel so free. Oh, sweet Jesus we feel so, so
free...

Welcome
to Detroit. To be precise, welcome to an abandoned steel mill on a
dilapidated industrial site/forgotten shitheap in Detroit.

In
comes our hero - a hero too good for a place this bad. He is Officer
Alex Murphy and he is the top cop in this dystopian disaster pisshole
of a city. He's on duty and he's dropped in on this dump in response
to a call from up on high. Reports say that a collection of the
nastiest hoodlums in town are knocking around these parts and Murphy
and Lewis have, thus, arrived in their patrol car to investigate
further.

He
moves stealthily with cautious poise through wreckage and rust,
nimbly making his way towards the mill buildings. While Officer Anne
Lewis approaches around the back, Murphy is coming at the target from
the front. (She's definitely around there but you're not going to
encounter her in this fight. We decided we couldn't spare the funds
for Nancy Allen's appearance fee and have saved the cash for a
special cameo from Kurtwood Smith as Clarence Boddicker later in this
battle.)

We
thus get a clear glimpse of the pair's teamwork, strategic planning
and courage - all characteristics of 'real po-lice'. That said, as
Murphy stalks in closer towards the hidey hole of the dirty crims he
gets a weird feeling. All at once, there's an odd reverberation in
the air.

A
breeze breezes and strange ripples ripple right before his eyes. The
effect is like the pounding of a transparent speaker and this
invisible beating booms like a horizontal puddle-splash in mid-air
before spitting out something.

The
something is Max Walker. He flies out of the vague portal and rolls
across the dirty ground, luckily enough missing any discarded lumps
of scrap metal or junked machinery.

It's
a pretty hard landing and he gets a few mud stains on his TEC
uniform. He sighs an unimpressed sigh then swiftly pulls himself
together and hops up onto his feet.

Close
enough to touch, eyeball to eyeball, the pair face each other.

"Ah,"
utters Walker. "Alex J. Murphy, I presume?"

Murphy
is quite taken aback, and that's perfectly reasonable considering
that a man with a mullet has just appeared out of nowhere and
addressed him by his full name.

"What?"
he asks, uncertain and on edge. "Who? What is this?"

Streaks
of uncertainty shoot through his nervous system and his training and
self-preservation instincts kick in. He reaches for his gun but
before he has chance to draw and do that trademark twirly-fingers
thing, Walker has struck.

Several
left sidekicks and a swift footstomp to his femur stop Murphy in his
tracks. "Ah ah ah," tuts the Timecop. "Do not try it.
Now, please listen to me..."

But
the local police officer doesn't want to listen to men who won't let
him draw his weapon so he starts up and attempts to fight back.
Murphy, here, makes a terrible mistake.

Walker
blocks all the punches and grabs that assail him and responds with a
series of punishing blows to Murphy's torso. As the confused cop
reels the chrononaut leaps up and executes a perfect set of splits
across two broken steel beams.

Murphy
is agog but goes again to tackle the new arrival. "Oh, Murphy,
please sit down," remarks Walker coolly, and with an agile leap
he takes to the air and comes down on his opponent with a footslap to
the face. Murphy drops to the floor, knocked out unconscious.

***

When
he wakes he sees a blurry shape standing over him. It's the same guy
- that inexplicable martial artist who appeared out of nowhere and
gave him a helluva beating.

"Ah,
Murphy! Welcome back," the figure cries out cheerily. As
Murphy's hazy vision comes back into focus he sees that the stranger
is smiling widely.

"Whu?
Wha? Who?" struggles the battered cop, his senses woozy and his
jaw sore after the thunder footslap.

"Don't
worry," interrupts the mysterious mullet of mirth. "Everything
will be absolutely fine. I apologise for the rough treatment but it
was for your own good. Now, look at this..."

Walker
reaches down and yanks up a body. It is the body of twisted
über-villain Clarence Boddicker and it has been beaten to a pulp and
is dripping with blood.

(It's
actually a prosthetic likeness. We decided we couldn't afford to pay
Kurtwood Smith's appearance fee either and spent a smaller sum on
some make-up and handcrafted special effects.)

"For
you, Murphy. This is for you." And then Walker punches the
half-dead crook's face repeatedly until it looks like the inside of a
pomegranate. With a glint in his eye he finishes up with a euphoric
howl of "Can you fly, Bobby?" and lobs Boddicker into a
stream of waste that winds its way out from the mill. In all the
flowing shit, acid and toxic atrocity the body (prosthetic lump)
corrodes and quickly melts away into nothingness.

Walker
turns back to Murphy, clapping his hands off at a job well done.
"Well, my friend Murphy. It's all over. You're safe. Now please,
go home to your family. Cherish them. Live a good life. Be happy and
count your blessings..."

In
a flash he's kicked out and has his right foot hovering an inch from
Murphy's face. He is just doing this because he can and because he
wants to show off. He chuckles to himself, smiles amiably at the
dumbstruck Detroit lawman and relaxes back to a resting stance.

The
enigmatic stranger who appeared out of nowhere then pulls a clunky
console out of his jacket and pounds an oversized red button. He
vanishes and Murphy is left alone.

The
cop blinks, totally clueless as to what the hell just happened. He
struggles to his feet and takes few deep breaths. He goes to radio
Lewis to arrange a rendezvous while simultaneously deciding that what
he wants to most of all is get home to his wife and son ASAP.

He
feels like he's having some kind of epiphany. He doesn't know what it
means but he's got a sense that he's had a lucky escape today.

The
bewilderment staggers him but he knows one thing for sure. It's good
to be alive...

***

A
short while later in the far future Walker sweeps through the
corridors of TEC headquarters beneath Washington D.C. There's a
spring in his step and a contented grin on his usually glum visage.

He
walks into the main office and encounters his boss-cum-best-buddy
Commander Mutazak. Mutazak is looking a little morose and stressed
today.

"Ah,
Max." he pipes up upon seeing the man who is probably his best
agent "Successful assignment?"

Walker
lights up and responds, "Yes, successful. I think it's fair to
say I won."

Mutazak
frowns. "You won? Won what?"

"RoboCop
vs. Timecop," Max replies with affected grandeur, drawing out an
imaginary marquee billboard in mid-air as he spells it out for the
perplexed Commander. "I saved Alex Murphy's life. He didn't get
killed by thugs. RoboCop never existed so I guess that means that in
pitched clash between RoboCop and Timecop, I come out as the winner."

He
places his fists on his hips and adopts the power stance of a
victorious champion.

It
means nothing to Mutazak. He chuckles and shrugs. "Y'know Max,
you're an odd guy. Now, hey back to work..."

Walker
sighs and drops the pose, returning to his standard look of brooding
world-weariness.

"C'mon,
work to do, 'cause there's a Senator coming to visit later. We gotta
prove we're worth the funds they pump into us before they shut us
down." continues the Commander. "Let's get at it, and I
don't wanna hear any crazy talk of 'RoboCop vs Timecop' or 'Superman
vs Batman' or whatever..."

Mutazak
pulls a sudden disgusted face, winces and in a flurry paces out of
the room muttering "Goddam Batfleck!" under his breath.

Deflated,
Max Walker moves towards his cubicle and takes a seat. He pulls open
his desk drawer - a drawer where he keeps a secret stash of vintage
action figures he would have given to his son had he not been blown
up on that awful night of tragedy a long time ago...

Where
once there was a RoboCop figurine there is now only empty space.
Bittersweet, thinks Walker as his eyes rove across an array of
colourful plastic miniatures.

Then
he sees the iconic shape of a certain caped crusader. Walker
meditates on the action figure a moment. He hears the echoing
grumbles of his boss in his inner ear. He thinks about origin
stories, muses on the way that lives are shaped by devastating events
and starts to imagine, "Hurm, what if?"

Soon
vague ideas coalesce and he comes to a determined plan. Without
hesitation he heads out of the offices straight for the time-shuttle.
His destination: the back alley behind a theatre in Gotham City, on
an ominous evening a long, long time ago...

AND THE WINNER IS...

TIMECOP

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! will return in:

"I'D FIGHT THAT FOR A DOLLAR”

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